Red
by Anidori-Kiladra
Summary: All his life, Tom had been entranced by the color red. TRAB, TRMM, TROC, TRLP, TRGW. Mostly canon, rating has gone up.
1. Amy

Red

Chapter One: Amy

He had always been entranced by the color red. The color of fire, the color of blood. It had always drawn him in, reaching out to touch the Gryffindor banners, clench his fist on them as they turned to ash in his mind. As they all would turn to ash one day.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But not for him. Never for him. The thirst was like a red thing inside of him, the thirst for vibrancy, for life. So it made sense that the ones who attracted him, those who drew his eye, were always imbued with that same color: red.

The first was little Amy Benson, twit, with her red hair in plaits that stuck at haphazard angles out the sides of her head. She was eight years old and he was nine. _Almost_ ten, he reminded himself, almost ten whole years he had spent in this place where no one was kind to him and nothing acted the way it was supposed to. But sometimes, Tom thought, his mouth curling up at the corners, he could use that to his advantage.

Like the silly boy with the rabbit. Billy, his name was. The boy's, not the rabbits. Tom didn't know the rabbit's name. And he didn't care. Tom had never had a rabbit, and besides, the blood looked much prettier dripping down from the ceiling to form a small puddle on the floor than it did inside the rabbit, where no one could see it.

The rabbit's blood looked like Amy's hair. Not her hair in the day, when it was closer to orange, but her hair at night, when he stood over her bed at the orphanage and she sighed in her sleep and Tom wanted to rip every hair out strand by strand.

So when they went to the beach, which wasn't a real beach, he took Amy's hand, even though she pulled away, and drug her down to the shore that wasn't a real shore. Dennis Bishop, that fool boy who always stuck his nose in where it didn't belong, insisted on following them, and by the time they reached the cliff face, it was too late to make him turn back.

So Tom ground his teeth together in frustration and told both of them to hold tight to the rope around his waist, and he lowered them all down in a way he couldn't really explain to himself, with the things that didn't work the way they were supposed to, but worked well enough for him.

And in the cave it was dark, and Dennis cowered in the corner while Amy sat huddled on the bare rock and black water oozed and swished sinisterly some yards away. Tom stooped to unbraid her plaits, and she shuddered at his touch but did not pull away, although the fear in her eyes was a tangible force.

Tom pulled his fingers through her hair, combing it with his nails, but he pressed too hard, he had never known when to stop pressing, and blood seeped out her scalp. Tom felt it, gritty and slick, and he rubbed it into her smooth hair and he laughed.

"Now," he told Amy. "Now it will be red all the time."

But she only started whimpering and wouldn't stop, and Dennis screamed, and it was all quite annoying, really, so he took them back up to the rest of the children, where the matron was waiting, worried and scared.

He left the orphanage not long after that, and when he came back that first summer, Amy was gone. Tom never knew what had happened to her, but it didn't really matter.

He never saw her again, but he remembered her hair for a long time, and every time he thought of it, it only woke in him a thirst for more.

xXx

A/N: So, love it? Hate it? Somewhere in between? Tell me what you think; I'd love to hear.

Next chapter: Myrtle.


	2. Myrtle

Red

Chapter Two: Myrtle

Red hair was scarce at Hogwarts, especially in Slytherin. Tom smiled wryly. Except for the occasional blonde, his house really did attract a darker sort.

But finally he found it, in his fifth year, cleverly disguised under black Muggle dye. He didn't understand why he'd never noticed it before, for the girl was a third year, he discovered, a Ravenclaw named Myrtle, and every year before the Christmas and Easter holidays her roots would take on the fresh glow of red, only to disappear again under their veil of black once term started again. And Tom smiled.

He was busy that year, preparing to open the Chamber of Secrets, but he took time to watch the girl. Myrtle. He noticed that not only was her hair black, but her fingernails also, chipping to reveal the rose crescents beneath. She usually carried a leather bound journal around with her and would sit in the library or the Great Hall and scribble out somethings. Poems, it looked like.

So once, when she left it lying by her schoolbag as she looked for a book, Tom opened it and read the poems. And, to his slight shock, they were all about him. Tom felt his lips curl against his teeth and had to pull to get them to unstick as they dried in the pallid air of the library. This made things so much easier. Once again, he had found something he could use to his advantage.

Then he took a closer look at the journal itself and noticed the address of the shop stamped on the back. Vauxhall Road, London. A Muggle shop. Muggleborn. Perfect.

"What are you doing with my things?" asked a quavering voice from behind him, interrupting the plans that were now zooming through his head like possessed gnomes, the plans that were so perfect it almost _hurt_ to think them.

He turned to find that Myrtle had come back, clutching a book to her chest, and he grinned wider.

"Just admiring your pretty journal…and your poems."

Scarlet flooded her plump cheeks at that. Tom's eyes lingered on those red cheeks. Red. He wondered if he would be able to feel the heat of them if he got close enough.

Without another thought, Tom leaned forward and brushed his lips across her skin, but he could barely feel the heat at all.

Myrtle dropped her book.

oOo

Tom saw more of Myrtle after that. In January, he kissed her flush on the lips behind the statue of the one-eyed witch on the third floor, and pressed his fingertips along her cheekbones, her temples. They broke apart, and Myrtle breathed heavily, her lips red and swollen.

"Nobody's ever kissed me before, Tom," she told him.

He thought about what her blood would look like spilled on the floor of the Chamber.

oOo

After it was all over, her blood splashed not on the floor of the Chamber but across the tiles of the girls' bathroom, Tom stood over her and looked at her.

Myrtle's glasses had skittered across the floor and her eyes were wide open and glazed. She sprawled, her hair half in her face, the red roots half grown in because Tom had told her he liked it that way. Her journal stuck out the pocket of her robes.

Almost tenderly, he brushed the hair out of her eyes, picked up her glasses and set them on her face. He plucked the diary from her pocket and placed it in his own. After all, it was a necessary part of his plan.

Then Tom set about cleaning up the blood smeared on Myrtle's arms and exposed calves, curlicues that looked like writhing snakes and circles that lay inside triangles. Because a basilisk killed with its eyes. There was no reason for there to be so much blood. No reason at all.

It was only later that Tom realized that even though he'd stared into them on numerous occasions, while she was both living and dead, he'd never known the color of Myrtle's eyes.

xXx

A/N: Reviews make my life a happier and sparklier place to be. Just remember that.

Next chapter: Whores of London.


	3. Whores

Red

Chapter Three: Whores

He made a point of noticing, after that. The Muggle whore in London, the one he wanted to strangle even as he pulsed in and out of her, had wide, watery blue eyes. He looked into those wide eyes and felt the rich red texture of her hair slipping through his fingers. It was probably a lie anyway, just like the rest of her. He felt better when her eyes were closed and breathed a sigh, opening his fingers to reveal the heavy bruises on her neck.

Or the small woman who used to come into Borgin and Burkes. He calls her a woman, but really she couldn't have been much older than he was himself, no more than twenty. She liked him, and he liked her fiery red hair and the way her hazel eyes closed when she kissed him behind an overturned cart in Knockturn Alley that had once held eyeballs.

He liked the way she felt moving under him and the way she said his name in her soft Irish lilt. But the thing he liked most was how easily his knife cut into her stomach and chest, and how thick her blood was, how it overflowed his cupped hands and ran down the outside of his fingers, a tingling, tickling, trickling feeling.

He lost track after that. Auburn and carroty, wine-hued or pale, it didn't matter. They all started to look the same once they were dead. And the eyes he remembered only in his dreams, an accusing line of blue, green, brown, black, hazel, amber and back again, all staring hatefully until blood seeped through the corners and obliterated it all.

It didn't matter, anyway. They were all filthy whores, and they all tasted of death, and dust and ashes in his mouth, and Tom couldn't stand it anymore. What he needed was_ life_.

But he didn't find life until he met her.

xXx

A/N: Shorter chapter this time. Hope you enjoyed! Remember, reviews get you faster updates, and the next chapter will reveal the identity of the mysterious _her_. Except I bet you can all figure out who it is. No matter! Review then, because it makes me happy. And you all want to make me happy, right? Okay, I'm done now...


	4. Lily

Red

Chapter Four: Lily

He saw her for the first time across a crowded room during the attack on the Prewitt's house, which unfortunately was playing host to an Order meeting at the time.

Tom- no, he was Lord Voldemort now, a Dark Lord with legions of faithful Death Eaters at his command, all powerful. But sometimes, he forgot to be Lord Voldemort, and reverted back to being just plain Tom, which he hated.

Lord Voldemort gnashed his teeth together in righteous fury. The incompetence. Nott had assured him that the Prewitt brothers would be alone tonight. He would be punished later.

But for now, Tom- _Voldemort_ simply pointed his wand at that imbecile Gideon Prewitt and watched with pleasure as the bolt of green light hit him in the back.

A pale flag streamed past him and he saw Lucius, masked, dueling with that old fool Dumbledore. He noted with relief that Dumbledore's hair was no longer that peculiar shade of auburn, but pure white instead. Now, when the time came, Voldemort could deal with him in a clearheaded manner, his head unclouded by thoughts of red.

Then he saw a brighter flash of color against the opposite wall. Toppling waves of crimson red fell from the head of this woman, whose mouth was set in a grim line as she fired off curse after curse.

She turned toward him as she aimed one at Bellatrix, and Voldemort got a better look at her face, small and peach pale, with fine, high eyebrows.

But he hardly noticed all of that, because by now it was like a curse, and he had to notice the color of her eyes, and they were green, deep green, vibrant green, the color of life.

Life itself was contained inside her, and for this reason he had to have her.

She caught him looking at her, and the energy, the life, in her eyes didn't dim, but instead her face grew more resolute, and she raised her wand to him.

He turned away then, ducking around a corner, and was so ashamed of his own cowardice that when he saw Fabian Prewitt battling (and beating) Avery, he actually shouted "Avada Kedavra!"

But he couldn't smile down at the lifeless body at his feet, because of the way she had looked at him, contempt and even disgust beneath the resolution, beneath the revolution.

And Lord Voldemort swore again that someday soon, she would be his.

oOo

A way to achieve this came in the form of that small, sniveling man, Peter Pettigrew. Wormtail, who oozed his way into Death Eater meetings, claiming he would give information on the order.

After that, it was almost being back at school, solving a difficult problem in Potions or Transfiguration before anyone else could. He smiled again, for the first time since he'd seen her.

Wormtail gave him constant updates on the doings of this Lily Potter of the crimson hair. She was married to that brash young fool James Potter, who had defied him in the past. They were expecting a child in July.

Lord Voldemort's fists clenched in anger and he almost killed Wormtail right there, before he remembered that Wormtail was essential to the plan.

Then that upstart Snape brought news of the prophesy.

Voldemort stood and paced, thinking hard. Dumbledore would tell the Potters of what he'd heard. they would go into hiding if they had any sense at all; he only had to know _where_.

"Become their Secret Keeper," he hissed, turning to Wormtail.

"B-but my lord, Sirius Black, he will be Secret Keeper. The Potters would never, never…"

"Find some way to diminish their trust in him, then. You are not completely without brains, Wormtail, however much you might act like it. Use them. You disappoint me."

Wormtail bowed himself out. "Yes, master."

oOo

It wasn't as easy as a Transfiguration problem, but in the end it worked, as all of Lord Voldemort's plans did.

And so he found himself marching up the Potters' garden path, hexing the unfortunate weeds that got in his way.

James, foolish to the last, didn't even have his wand with him. With him disposed of, Voldemort climbed the steps and strode down the hallway to the room at the end of it, where he could hear frantic rocking and "shh"-ing noises.

He knew that he must kill this child, to ensure his continued rise to power, but to see Lily standing there, red hair curtained around the tiny baby boy, caused a crack in Voldemort's chest to open, and it was as if a viscous liquid were coursing through his insides.

"Stand aside, you silly girl," he told her, gesturing impatiently.

"No, not Harry, please! Take me instead!" she cried, desperation plain on her face.

"Stupid woman! You could join me and live, if you would but stand aside!"

Voldemort knew that she must say yes, she had to join him, or he would not survive. Couldn't, without those red waves and life-giving eyes.

"Never," she whispered, clutched the child to her chest in a last embrace, then laid him in the bed.

She stood before him, arms at her sides. Her wand clattered to the floor.

The viscous fluid was oozing all through him now as he gazed at her. He lifted a strand of her hair, wrapped it around a finger, then let it fall. He stepped back.

The green light hit her center and infused her body with that light, like _life_, before she fell to the floor and the light went out.

xXx

A/N: Well, we took a slight departure from canon there. Hope you don't mind terribly. Thanks to all who have reviewed me so far; you make me want to keep writing! Any new reviewers are welcome too (subtle hint).

Next (and last!) chapter: Ginny


	5. Ginny

Red

Chapter Five: Ginny

About a year after Potter had escaped with the Stone and ignominiously defeated him- no, not defeated him. A minor setback, that was all.

About a year after Voldemort had left Quirrell, he found himself back in the forests of Albania, and his memories changed and shifted.

He remembered things he'd never remembered before. Being back at school, being sixteen again, but it was different somehow.

There was a girl there, and her copper hair lit up corridors that were otherwise dark and shadowy.

She called him Tom, and said he was her best friend.

No one had called him Tom for many years. No one had ever called him their best friend.

Voldemort watched this girl through his own eyes, eyes that saw things he didn't remember. The eyes of Tom.

He watched her open the Chamber of Secrets on his command. He watched her wake up and have no idea where she was or why she had red paint splattered on her robes. He watched her grow paler and more deathly throughout the year, but that copper-red hair stayed just as bright, illuminating darkened corners.

He watched as Tom took her down and laid her in the Chamber, her hair as red against the damp stone as Myrtle's blood would have been.

He watched, and had to see himself once again endure a humiliating defeat by Harry Potter.

He watched Potter whisk her away, little Ginny, so scared and pale. But he knew he would see her again.

oOo

His wand clatters to the floor as Lily's did so many years ago. He has once again been defeated by Potter, for good this time, he thinks, beaten by his own spell.

He drops. His arm falls in front of his eyes. He likes the way the red scratches look on his white, white skin.

Red like fire, red like blood. Red like life and red like death that wears a mask.

And as he thinks of red, it comes whipping, flying, at the edge of his vision, and there she is. Little Ginny, all grown up. Throwing herself into her hero's arms, into the future she wanted all along, while the villain dies on the ground.

And Tom realizes something, as he lies there, not sure if he's dead or alive, realizes something that, in all of his thrice-damned years of worshipping and being ruled by the color red, he failed to notice.

Red will always kill you in the end.


End file.
